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Overview
Erotic entanglements, startling revelations, a furtive intruder, even a possible murder? Not at all what the students of Mind Control class envisioned when they gathered on a ranch outside Buenos Aires for a relaxing weekend. But here nothing is quite what it seems, least of all Magdalena herself, who while recounting the weekend's events, changes her name as often as she changes her mind.
Within the taut framework of a murder mystery, Alicia Steimberg weaves a tale far more concerned with who-is-it than with whodunit. In what is probably the celebrated author's most interesting and complex novel, Magdalena conducts us through her tortuous childhood as an Argentine Jew and through her doubts about morality and mortality, the existence of God, and the amorphous nature of identity. Animated by Steimberg's lively dialogue and wit, this eccentric tour of some of the more pressing questions about gender, identity, and existence itself is finally as intriguing and suspenseful as the mysteries large and small, otherworldly and mundane, that it invites us to contemplate.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1933, the descendant of Eastern European Jews, Alicia Steimberg is a well-known figure in the world of Argentine letters. She is the winner of many prestigious literary prizes, including the 1992 Planeta Prize for Call Me Magdalena. Andrea G. Labinger is a professor of Spanish and honors director at the University of La Verne in Claremont, California. She has translated many works, including Steimberg's Musicians and Watchmakers.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803292826 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNP - Bison Books |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2001 |
| Series: | Latin American Women Writers |
| Pages: | 137 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Born in Buenos Aires in 1933, the descendant of Eastern European Jews, Alicia Steimberg is a well-known figure in the world of Argentine letters. She is the winner of many prestigious literary prizes, including the 1992 Planeta Prize for Call Me Magdalena. Andrea G. Labinger is a professor of Spanish and honors director at the University of La Verne in Claremont, California. She has translated many works, including Steimberg's Musicians and Watchmakers.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
When you leave the main road you have to walk down a long dirtpath to get to the entrance of Las Lilas. There's no gate: the woodenfront door is tall and majestic, its topmost part safeguarded againstfurtive visitors by sharp little iron posts. On both sides of the doorare walls whose uppermost portions are similarly protected. Whilethe walls and door are almost impregnable, if you simply walk aboutfifty yards in either direction, you'll come upon a very thick, althoughnot very tall, evergreen hedge. With the help of a machete, you canhack an opening in the hedge and pass through to the other side, or,by walking just a bit farther, the furtive visitor will discover that theevergreen hedge turns into a simple wire fence, not even barbedwire, that he can cross by placing one foot on the wire below andlifting up the wire on top with one hand. Once inside, the intruderwill find himself in a cultivated field. He'll wend his way to the entryby sidling along close to the fence, and then next to the wall (since ifhe crosses the open field, his figure will be discernible from a distance).If the wheat is fully grown, he'll proceed waist-deep amongthe stalks. If he's not wearing boots, the thistles will prick him andhe'll be exposed to snakebite, or he'll be covered by little red bugsthat will torment him later on, because those red bugs get under yourskin and you can get rid of them only by rubbing the affected partwith soap, creating a layer of insulation that asphyxiates them.
* * *
We reached Las Lilas at nightfall, on aThursday in November.Juan Antonio and Emi came out to meet us and offered to take usimmediately to the rooms they had prepared for us during our stayat the estancia. I stopped for a moment in front of the house, at thefoot of the front steps, next to a bed of purple flowers that smelleddivine. Intoxicated by their fragrance, I looked around me. Theflower bed on my left, on my right the swimming pool, and a littlefarther on, the wide, thatched roof of the gazebo. I climbed themarble staircase, admired the black-and-white mosaic tile (also marble),and leaned over the balustrade to contemplate the lovelyscenery—the woods, the gently rolling, variegated countryside:greens, rusts, honey-hued fields. Far in the distance, a monstrouslybright yellow piece of farm machinery destroyed my illusion of havingtraveled backward in time.
Instead of going to my room along with the others, I descendedthe staircase I had just climbed and walked along the gravel path. Noone noticed me. I had gone about thirty yards among the shrubs andflower beds when someone called me from the doorway and I had toturn around and go back. I felt happy to be in the country andsmiled at everyone who crossed my path: the occupants of thehouse, the servants, some geese unexpectedly traversing the road. Iclimbed the stairs again and entered a long hallway leading to thedoor of one of the rooms, where Enrique was waiting for me.
The room was spacious, furnished with a big bed, two nighttables, and an unpolished oak dresser. On the dresser was an antiquebasin with a chipped rim. The latticed window faced the garden.The bathroom was enormous, with antique, yellowed furnishings.The bathtub had lion-claw feet.
Tastefully attired in a lime-green sundress and sandals, with atouch of Femme behind each earlobe, I sat down on the bed to readan old Ellery Queen novel I had found in one of the dresser drawerswhile I waited for Enrique to finish showering and dressing. I couldfeel the fresh evening breeze through the open window. I felt expansivelyhappy at being in the country.
A half hour later, Enrique and I got together with the other guestsand the owners of the house in the large parlor on the first floor. Theparlor floor was also made of black-and-white mosaic tiles, rhomboid.There was a marble fireplace, where logs probably crackled inwinter. Everyone was settled in chairs around a low table coveredwith glasses, bottles, and trays of hors d'oeuvres. In one cornerof the parlor there was a baby grand piano, on which a child ofEusebio's—the man who had driven us there—practiced a sillytune, making mistakes with practically every note. Vexed, I looked athim, wondering how we would endure the next few days at theestancia with so many little kids, because in addition to Eusebio'stwo, there were Juan Antonio's and Emi's children, Gustavo's baby,and two other children who were friends of Juan Antonio's kids. Ihadn't brought any along myself. My adolescents preferred to stay inBuenos Aires with their grandmother, devoting themselves to theirnoisy pursuits. I must confess I have no fondness for small children,especially if they aren't mine, and I had entertained fantasies ofspending some peaceful days at Las Lilas, without squalling orspilled drinks or parents shouting at kids who had climbed up tosome great height and threatened to fall into an abyss.
I was about to get away from the piano so the off-key tunewouldn't destroy my eardrums when I saw, on top of the instrument,a photo in a silver frame: Juan Antonio with his two sisters, allthree in tennis outfits, racquets in hand. I didn't know why, but thatphoto attracted me like a magnet. On the shelves built into the wallbehind the piano, there were other pictures of Juan Antonio's family,some of them quite old, depicting scenes on the estancia: men andwomen on horseback, with elegant riding clothes; young women ingauzy dresses sitting beneath an arbor in the garden.
* * *
"Just imagine! We haven't had breakfast yet, Enrique."
"What's your hurry to have breakfast? Last night's dinner wasfantastic: twelve people around the table, uniformed attendants.."
"Did you say 'attendants'?"
"Yes, but I said it with some hesitation."
"Shouldn't you have said 'waiters'?"
"What for? Let's abandon any pretense of standard speech."
"No, but that's going too far. Let's stick with a more or less generalsort of parlance, with a few inevitable regionalisms."
"Fine. The attendants finished serving dessert: homemade flanwith dulce de leche. We adjourned to the first floor for coffee. Emi,wearing a huge straw hat and holding a riding crop in her hand, wasstretched out on the divan like a queen."
"Is Emi a mulatto?"
"That's what she always aspired to be; Juan Antonio fell in lovewith her because he thought she was a mulatto. But she's just dark-skinned.She's of Spanish and Indian descent. Juan Antonio brokewith his family back then and went to live with Emi in a one-roomapartment that they cleaned and swept themselves. They were happy,though. Later Emi won over Juan Antonio's mother, and he got theestancia back and Emi helped him restore it."
"We were talking about Emi with her straw hat and whip,stretched out on the divan."
"Yes. We talked; we had coffee. Later we went to sit outside in thewicker chairs on the verandah, because it was a glorious evening,with crickets chirping, fireflies, the fragrance of flowers ..."
"Sabina ..."
"Is my name Sabina?"
"Yes. Don't you like it?"
"No. There's something greasy about the name Sabina."
"What?"
"Greasy lips."
"Women named Sabina have greasy lips?"
"No. I meant that the name Sabina has greasy lips."
"All right. Gertrude."
"No. Women named Gertrude have thick lips and black ringlets."
"Curls. I think you're supposed to say 'black curls' Magdalena?"
"All right. In spite of the fact that Magdalenas tend to be fat, withbroad shoulders, and they run cattle farms with fifteen milk cowsand a hundred barnyard fowl all by themselves."
"Magdalena. Nicknamed Maggie."
"What language are we speaking?"
"We already determined that. It's general parlance, the most universalmodality possible, with a few regionalisms thrown in to reflectthe speech of those middle-class Argentines who live in BuenosAires and fancy themselves to be well educated."
"Then it wouldn't be Maggie, but rather Maggi. Now let's gohave breakfast."
* * *
That night, our first night on the estancia, we had gone to ourroom and slept like logs until morning, when we were awakened bythe birds singing, the children shouting, and a few hens cackling asthey escaped from the henhouse. We also heard the shouts of thecook as she chased after them, followed by Emi's cries as she leanedout her bedroom window and shouted insults at the cook. A halfhour later we met in the dining room for breakfast with the otherguests. This room, like the rest of the house, was furnished simply: atall, heavy table, covered with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth,a few equally heavy chairs with woven seats (the kind that leavemarks on the back of your thighs), a sideboard, and two solid cheststhat reached waist-high on a person of average height. The childrenhad to stand on tiptoe to see the tops of these pieces of furniture,which held trays or bottles that didn't fit on the table. At that time ofday the sideboard held trays of toast and croissants and smaller trayswith butter or dulce de leche, the estancia's own famous dulce de leche,cooked in a copper kettle with vanilla beans. Someone always founda hard little piece of vanilla bean in the sauce and sucked it cleanbefore tossing it out the window. Every so often I'm visited by thespirit of the countryside I knew when I was a girl: the birds singing,the dulce de leche.
"How strange! I thought you found the country boring."
"It never bores me to talk about the country, because I can talkabout twilight, the breeze gently ruffling the stalks of wheat, thecontentment of the farmer and the fragrance of the wisteria ... Nothingabout droughts or the va-a-a-st distances. In any case, wefinally had our breakfast, together with some very badly behavedchildren."
"What were the children doing?"
"They were helping themselves from all the dishes and trays, andthey left everything a mess. They were playing with a little rubberball, and suddenly one of them missed the mark and the ball fell intoEnrique's cup, and to top it all off he was dressed in a white shirt andblue tie at the time."
"My God"
"But nothing bothered us after the first bite of that crisp toastwith butter and homemade dulce de leche. And right after that a goodcup of excellent coffee."
"With milk?"
"Yes, it was already mixed with the milk, in an enormous coffeepot."
"Just like in those old-fashioned hotels."
"Everything was old-fashioned in that house. Even the kitchenhelper, who was white and chubby, with a blue dress and apron andwhite slippers, with freckles on her arms and chest. She was the onewho knew how to make a cocktail with port and a beaten egg."
"What's it like?"
"You have to go get the eggs from the henhouse and use themwhile they're still warm. You separate the whites from the yolks. Youcan reserve the whites to make meringue. You beat the yolks withsugar until they take on a whitish color, and you add the port dropby drop, beating all the while. That woman beats egg yolks withsugar and port all day long."
* * *
"Now let's have breakfast in Mar del Plata, as you suggested."
"This isn't the same place where we always go."
"But I like it, dear. It's sheltered from the wind and you can see theocean. How many croissants do you want?"
"How many do you think? Three, of course. Don't they alwaysbring three croissants with the café au lait?"
"No, dear, that was before. Now you have to ask for the numberof croissants you're going to eat."
"Why did they change it, dear?"
"Because diets have become so popular: croissants are very fattening.By the way, shouldn't you be on a diet?"
"I'm not planning to diet in Mar del Plata, dear."
"But you weigh 125."
"And you weigh 150. Let's go to the casino."
"Later. I think I'm just going to order café au lait and nothing else.No croissants."
"I'll do the same, dear. Coffee with skim milk and artificialsweetener."
"Now you're talking."
"May I ask your name? We've called each other 'dear' so much I'veforgotten your name."
"My name is Ignacio Ibargüengoitía?"
"Basque?"
"Strange that you should ask after forty years of marriage. Mygrandparents were Basque, all four of them."
"Four Basque grandparents. It's Iñaki, then, not Ignacio. DoesBasque use the same characters as Spanish? Or do they use a differentalphabet?"
"No, that's Yiddish. I can't remember your name."
"Flora."
"Wasn't your name Sabina?"
"No, Flora."
"Flora Rosenfeld?"
"Rosenblatt."
"Rosenberg."
"Rosenblum."
"Rosenwasser."
"Rosenstein."
"I don't think so."
"But it is, though."
"Who said that, you or me?"
"I'm not sure."
"It doesn't matter. Flora, then."
"It sounds like you're saying my name for the first time."
"That's ridiculous."
"Yes."
"I'm referring to the name. You might as well be named Fauna.The name Flora sounds like it was invented by a Pole who didn'tknow much Spanish and thought all feminine nouns ended in a."
"Yes. Being called Flora has limited me quite a bit."
"I don't see why. Many great artists and scientists were namedFlora."
"Nothing against the Poles, right?"
"Why are you asking me that now? You should have asked earlier."
"I was distracted. Got anything against the Jews?"
"You know I don't. My mother is Jewish."
"That's no guarantee of anything. The name Flora has limited mequite a bit in my life; it's a very rigid name. Like an artificial flower.It's hard to use the diminutive 'Florita.' And an abbreviation like'Flo' sounds contrived."
"If I have a daughter, I'll name her Flor, or Florencia."
"You do have a daughter. Our daughter is thirty-nine years old,and her name isn't Flor or Florencia."
"That's true."
"Her name is Ana María,"
"That's ridiculous."
"It was a fashionable name when she was born."
"Ana María, daughter of Flora and Iñaki."
"Rosenkrantz."
"Should we look in the telephone book?"
"No, it's useless to consult a book. The only thing that's useful iswhat's in your memory."
"Did you speak or did I?"
"I did."
"And my last name?"
"Ibargüengoitía."
"Iribarne."
"Uribelarrea."
"Atolaguirre."
"Carriquiriborde."
"That's impossible."
"No, it's not. It means 'house at the edge of the road.'"
"But I knew the Carriquiriborde girl. We went to school together."
"You've told me that a thousand times. Your little schoolmateCarriquiriborde. House at the edge of the road."
"Is it better to be Basque or Jewish?"
"It depends on where you are. I don't know what the Basques'situation is like in New York."
"How about we order just one croissant?"
"Just one for both of us?"
"One apiece. They're teeny."
"Teeny! I'm afraid that in general parlance you'd have to say'tiny.'"
"Is it better to be Italian?"
"Descended from Italians? Named Bellagamba?"
"I don't know."
"Italian surnames sound nicer."
"The problem is language, then?"
"It's the main problem."
"The sun's getting too hot."
"Yes, let's go put on our bathing suits."
"And walk on the hard sand along the shore."
"Yes."
* * *
"What did you do after you had breakfast at the estancia?"
"When we couldn't eat another bite, we went for a walk. JuanAntonio, good host that he is, immediately found something for allthe guests to do, including the children, thank God. While thosewho remained on the balcony with Juan Antonio went off to visitthe stables, I, who had been hiding behind a column, suddenlyfound myself alone in the house; that is, with only the servants, busywith their chores, for company. Now I could look around to myheart's content, gazing for as long as I wished at the silver-framedportraits of Juan Antonio and his family, and especially at the one ofJuan Antonio flanked by his two sisters, all three of them in tennisclothes, racquets in hand. The three of them bathed in sunlight,barely smiling. Aristocratic smiles. A bit distant, disdainful. If youlook closely, you can see that one of the sisters isn't smiling; it's analmost invisible, bad-tempered rictus. The other sister has the expressionI already described; Juan Antonio is smiling more openly,and there's no scorn in his smile."
"Juan Antonio was a nice guy."
"Is a nice guy. He told me that when he was a boy he would jumpin the swimming pool fully dressed to rescue the drowning butterfliesthat had fallen into the water."
"How strange that the butterflies fell into the water."
"That's what it was like in Juan Antonio's youth. He agreed toattend a regular school to keep his sickly brother company."
"Sickly?"
"A bit slower than ordinary children."
"Juan Antonio was a nice guy."
"Is. If he weren't, how could he stand to have all these people asguests on his estancia, when they don't seem to have anything incommon with him or with each other?"
"How was it that Juan Antonio met all of you?"
"We were all classmates in a Mind Control course."
"In a way Juan Antonio is sort of déclassé, isn't he?"
"Yes, it started when he divorced his first wife for Emi."
"Was Emi a mulatto?"
"I already told you otherwise. But she had a splendid figure; shewore tight black dresses and an impressive golden metal belt. I'dsay it was bronze if I didn't know how impossible that is, becausebronze is too heavy. The two wide bracelets she wore on each armwere made of bronze, though, and each one had a piece of chaindangling down."
"Broken chains?"
"Of course, anyone who saw those pieces of dangling chain imaginedthem welded together. Emi with her hands chained, the linkssoldered together in the blacksmith's forge."
"But now she's a former slave."
"A haughty, gorgeous brunette, provocative, Latina, somewherebetween Spanish and Indian."
"Yes."
"After breakfast, while everyone went out for a walk or horsebackriding, I went to the parlor on the first floor. I stared andstared at the picture of Juan Antonio and his sisters. I stared atit until the tears flowed from the effort of imagining myself partof that family. Thinking I was the daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter,great-great-granddaughter of wealthy, refined people,and that I'd never done anything in my life except play tennisand smile scornfully."
"With several generations of Argentine ancestors?"
"Not necessarily. It wouldn't bother me to have played tennis in1880 in a dacha near Yalta with my lazy, corrupt Russian cousins."
"Russian Jews?"
"Why not? They could be Jews, as long as they were never affectedby poverty or persecutions. After looking at the picture for a while, Istarted to get bored and thought it wasn't so bad to have a history ofpogroms in Russia, a tenement apartment in Buenos Aires, and anold Yiddish newspaper used for wrapping a jar of plum candy thatmy grandmother gave me as a gift."
"What was the plum candy like?"
"It was unique, just as it had been made in the kitchen of thedacha, by a barefoot, milky-skinned servant, with freckles on herarms and chest. A peasant who wasn't allowed into the parlor becauseshe was so coarse."
"She was probably the one who deflowered the young men in thefamily."
"And later on they'd go to bordellos in Saint Petersburg."
"Is Yalta far from Saint Petersburg?"
"I don't know, and nothing in this world could make me want tofind out. The servant would put the copper pot on the fire to boil theplums. You'd have to boil them every day. Let them cool off. Drainthe water. Boil them again the next day. And so on for a whole week.On the eighth day, you'd weigh the plums on a scale and put equalamounts of plums and beet sugar in the pot, a sugar that was sohard that if you wanted to break off a piece, you'd have to usesmall scissors. Those were the scissors my ninety-five-year-old great-grandmotherkept in a drawer in her room in Buenos Aires and tookout only when she served tea in porcelain cups. On the eighth day,the servant would place the big copper pot on a slow flame. Equalamounts of plums and sugar, all covered with water. The waterboiled gently, forming a purplish foam on the surface. My grandfatherwas my great-grandmother's oldest child."
"And he was fourteen years old at that time."
"Yes, he was fourteen, and he entered the dacha's big kitchen atsiesta time to stick his hand down the servants blouse."
"While the plums boiled slowly."
"You could tell when the candy was ready by putting a bit on aplate and cutting it with a knife. If the slit didn't close up right away,that meant the candy was ready."
"When it was ready, you took it off the flame and let it cool."
"The plums glistened like jewels in the syrup. You put a wholeplum with syrup at the bottom of the porcelain cup, and you filledthe cup with tea. You would admire the shadings and the clarity. It'sstrange that even at my age now, my heart beats faster and I getgooseflesh when I say I'm Jewish. It's odd that I have to thinkcarefully before I say I'm Jewish and Argentine or Argentine andJewish, so the word order won't upset anyone and in order to tell themath. It's a common thing for two Jews to get together and make afew references to Jewish folklore, generally referring to their familyhistories—the inevitable immigration—or to tell some Jewish joke.After these preliminaries, which serve as a kind of safeguard, thetopic of Judaism disappears from the conversation. When the meetingis between Jews and non-Jews, it's possible not to make theslightest reference to Judaism, but at times Jews will do so, if theyneed to affirm their identity, or rather if they need to anticipate anon-verbal reaction by the others. In a country like Argentina, withits huge waves of migration, people can detect your origin quicklyfrom your surname. If I say my name is Rosenthal, Rosenblum,Rosenwasser ..."
"Enough, enough!"
"All right. My cat is chronically ill."
"What's his problem?"
"He has arthritis of the spine and a dislocated kneecap on the righthind leg. Its cause is unknown, but it makes him limp. The dislocatedkneecap could be fixed, but he can't have an operation becausehe has a heart murmur."
"Just therapeutic treatment, then?"
"A tonic that we mix with his milk, and a salt-free diet, because ofhis heart problem."
"And how's he doing?"
"Except for the limp and his reduced activity (he doesn't jumpthrough the patio window onto the kitchen table any more, whichalways startled me and even cost me a teapot, although I must admitit was the only thing he ever broke in his countless leaps), he seemsto have adapted to the situation, and at nine years old, he seems tohave accepted a dignified old age."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Call Me Magdalena by Alicia Steimberg. Copyright © 1992 by Alicia Steimberg.
Translation copyright © 2001 Andrea G. Labinger.Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.